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Hampton Roads Community Foundation Blog

Turn your passion into reality. Our community foundation donors are passionate people with a common mission: inspiring philanthropy and transforming the quality of life in southeastern Virginia. Since 1950, we’ve invested over $225 million on behalf of generous people, who live, work and strive to make Hampton Roads a great community.

Gazing at Maury High School, George Consolvo marvels at how law colleagues in Richmond can’t believe “my connection to my high school” decades after graduation. But ties run deep for this Kaufman & Canoles lawyer, who counts at least 25 family members as alumni of Norfolk’s first public high school, which opened in 1911.

George, a 1963 Maury graduate, is board secretary for The Maury Foundation, which is amplifying its scholarship program through a new partnership. In 2017 The Maury Foundation donated $500,000 to the Hampton Roads Community Foundation to establish two permanent Maury Foundation scholarship funds.

The scholarships will be awarded to new Maury graduates starting in 2018. For the first time, recipients can renew scholarships for up to four years of college study.

Funds come from hundreds of alumni who donated to The Maury Foundation over the decades. One of the Maury Foundation scholarships is named for the late Oscar Ferebee Jr. (class of 1936), whose wife Sandra memorialized him with a Maury Foundation endowment in 2014.

Maury High School, which opened in 1911, is Norfolk's first public high school.

Founded in 1986, The Maury Foundation is among the first charitable foundations in the country created to benefit a single public high school. Attorney Robert Nusbaum (class of 1941) of Williams Mullen led initial fundraising with the late Vincent Thomas (class of 1939), a former Norfolk mayor. The foundation “was a rarity, and we didn’t have any models to follow,” Bob recalls.

Over the decades, The Maury Foundation has awarded $150,000 in one-year college scholarships to more than 115 Maury graduates. Partnering with the community foundation “makes sense,” says Maury Foundation board president Ryan King (class of 2004), a Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate brokerage associate. “It’s impressive what we have done before, and now we can do more than one-year scholarships.”

Board treasurer Jennifer Pfitzner Saunders (class of 1997), a partner in Saunders, Matthews & Pfitzner PLLC, says the board wanted to award multi-year scholarships but logistics were daunting for an all-volunteer organization. “It is more effective to work with the community foundation since it is equipped to do scholarships and renew them,” Jennifer says. “The foundation will make sure scholarships go to people who need them. This will preserve all the work that has gone into The Maury Foundation.”

Development chair Peggy Beale (class of 1973), president of Paxton Company marine suppliers and a third-generation Maury graduate, likes knowing “The Maury Foundation will perpetually help Maury students” through the scholarship funds. Being free of scholarship administration gives Maury Foundation board members more time for special events and fundraising.

Bob Nusbaum, a donor to both The Maury Foundation and the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, calls the new partnership “exciting. The school foundation has already grown to a magnitude beyond my imagination.” He looks forward to seeing it expand to new levels.